For my children and others who may be interested. Stories and tidbits on various subjects from out-of-copyright books. Some texts will be slightly edited from the original.

I suggest copying and pasting these posts into a word processor in order to print them for your children. Mine enjoy reading them on the web.

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Thursday, October 13, 2005

A Clever and Amusing Word Game

from the 1911 Book of Knowledge: The Children's Encyclopedia (Grolier)page 2970

The game of doublets is an interesting word game that gives plenty of scope for skill and ingenuity, and enables us to exercise our memories and to make good use of our knowledge of words. Two words are chosen, each containing the same number of letters, and the words should be either of quite opposite meaning, as wrong and right, black and white, good and evil, rise and fall, and so on, or they should stand for things quite different from one another, as wood and iron, butter and cheese, soap and grease.

The game is to change one word into the other by changing only one letter at a time, and making a chain of words between the doublets. Two or three examples will make the method clear.

blackslackstackstalkstaleshalewhalewhilewhite

tametimetilewilewild

shoeshotsootboot

beefbeenbeanbeakpeakperkpork

catcotdotdog

moreloreloselossless

blackblockclockclickchickchinkchinewhinewhite

It will be seen by these examples that only one letter is altered in each word to make the next, and every change makes an actual dictionary word. It is not allowable to make a change of a letter that will produce something that is not a real word. For instance, we might have changed beef into pork like this: beef, boef, boek, bork, pork. That, of course, would be wrong, as no such words as boef, boek, bork, exist.

Then the transformation from one word to the other must be made with as few changes as possible. In changing from black to white we might have proceeded like this: black, block, clock, click, chick, thick, think, thine whine, white; but here we make eight words in between, and not more than seven are needed.

It must, of course, be understood that in changing one letter to make a new word in the chain, the substituted letter must occupy exactly the same position in the new word that the discarded letter did in the old word. Thus we can change bean into bran, but not into barn, for e being the second letter in bean, r must be the second letter in the new word, as it is in bran.